


Never breathe a word about your loss

by Scappodaqui



Series: If [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, BDSM if you squint, Canon-Typical Violence, Catholic Guilt, Catholic Steve Rogers, D-Day, Decoy Captain Americas, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Period-Typical Sexism, Protectiveness, Secretly Romantic Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers-centric, WW II Tactics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-15 10:44:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4603782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scappodaqui/pseuds/Scappodaqui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>If you can make one heap of all your winnings</i><br/>And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,<br/>And lose, and start again at your beginnings<br/>And never breathe a word about your loss...<br/>(from Rudyard Kipling's 'If')</p><p>Steve Rogers during the war. Covers the same time period as 'If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,' but with very different information--Bucky was unaware of much going on behind the scenes. As usual, expect copious symbolism, Bible and Shakespeare quotations, angst, and puns.  Also, decoy fake Captain Americas confusing everyone for years to come, covert ops tactics, and Steve learning to use his shield.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**December 1944.**

 

Steve tried to wait for the immediacy of loss to fade. To settle into him the way it had when he had lost his mother, to sink eventually to acceptance. But this time it remained. It hung over him like moisture in the air, clouds gathering, crackling in their bellies with the deep faraway thunder of growing rage.

Distant from himself, watching his hands move from the outside, he took the form provided by the army for letters home. He sat at a desk that seemed too small for him in his tent, on the night they arrived back at base after their long, fruitless search. For Bucky. For. Bucky’s body.

Dear Mrs. Barnes, he began to write, and stopped, pen trailing ink across the paper.

He wanted to write: it was my fault.

That would be selfish. It would be a way of asking their absolution.

Better to let them see the blame that lay on him already, let them figure it out on their own. They would: they would see the truth of things. Let them blame him, without his asking forgiveness. He didn’t deserve that.

Dear Mrs. Barnes, he wrote. The pen trailing ink across paper like the streak of tears. He swallowed. I am writing you because I know that you have received the Army telegram already. I wanted you to hear from me as well. I wanted you to know that Bucky died saving my life. He was a hero.

(That would mean very little to them. Bucky had always been a hero to his sisters and his mother. Even if he was just a hero of tying hair-ribbons while he hummed a silly song. Now he was not even that.)

Steve pulled his chair in closer to the wobbly desk. A hard aching thrum ran through his body, and made it nearly impossible to stay still. He wanted to scream. He wanted to run. He wanted to grab hold of Bucky and drag him back. They hadn’t even found the body. _The body_. Where was Bucky now? The sky he couldn’t see through the Church confessional. God is love. The words rang empty now.

Bucky’s body had contained him totally and not at all. He’d filled himself. _(You calling me fulla myself, punk?) (God, Bucky. No.) (‘Cause I’ll show you--)._ His smile. The brash shift of his shoulders, the lift of his lips. The quirk of his mobile eyebrows. The surety of his movement inside his own skin, the way he canted himself sideways, or hiked up one leg, getting a better angle. Or put his hand on Steve’s throat so he could feel all the ridges there while he swallowed, just tasting Bucky, inside and out, when they--

No. You don’t deserve this.

You don’t. Deserve.

_Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things._

A bitter taste scalded his throat.

 _You just throw away every goddamn good thing you get_ , said Bucky.

The bugle sounded reveille. He had been awake all night, staring at the mostly blank paper.

The commandos sat around the dinner table that evening and looked at each other in short, darting glances. Searching each other’s faces for some sign of who was going to speak. Who could find something to say.

“Here’s to Barnes,” Dugan said at last, raising his mug of water. Not drinking anything stronger, for once: stone-cold sober, maybe in deference to Steve, who couldn’t sink his sorrows that way anymore.

Steve said, "He was the best--"

He stopped and looked down.

Dugan, gruff: "He was the best at a lotta things, to hear him talk. Best shooter. Best dancer. Most modest. Fought with him early on, before any a’ you. He--well, he was never modest, but he could be real gentle with the new guys."

Monty said, "The absolute _worst_ punster." And then, “ _I shall not look upon his like again_ ,” a quote Steve didn’t know. _I shall not look upon his like again. Not look-- Never-- Not_. Something else Monty had once said came back to him. He had said it when they had looked hopeless out across a field in France. All flowers, vivid, listing gently in the breeze. And bodies strewn among them like so many rotting logs. Like they slept. Sleeping, like logs, _get yer leg offa me Steve it’s like a damn log_ \--the bodies like so much wood--

Monty had said, looking at it, this puts me to mind of a Midsummer nightmare, and he had said, _In this sleep of death what dreams may come?_

Now, carefully not looking at Steve, Jones said, “He was smarter than he thought he was, and brave. Never forget how he stuck up for me when the Lt. gave me a hard time for using the white showers--”

“--the only showers there were in the camp--” Monty pointed out.

“Yeah. Never mind he got staff duty for it.”

“Again,” said Morita.

“Actually, he put boot black in the Lt.’s toothpaste, while he was at it,” said Jones. He shook his head. “Barnes.”

Dernier smiled briefly, and then said, “He was hopeless at la langue francais, mais… he always… when those mines did not go off, when I made such a mistake, he said kindly things to me.”

There was a silence.

“He listened,” Morita said, turning to look at Steve, and said to him, steadily, “We were lucky to have him.” Steve stared back. Morita had _known_... had been closer to Bucky than any of them maybe, maybe even more than Dugan. Morita said, “He always looked out for the other guy. Back in… before. He gave this kid his water ration.”

“What happened to that kid?” Dugan said.

Morita took a breath.

Steve said, “I have to go talk to Phillips.”

* * *

  
**November 1943.**

Lucky to have him. Steve felt so lucky to have him back, after the rescue from Kreischberg. So lucky to have him back he wasn’t able to look past that feeling all that much. Anyhow; Bucky seemed mostly fine in training, in the eight weeks Colonel Phillips demanded their unit put in before they shipped out.

  
They stood out on the rifle range, the targets distant but clear. Bucky shot with cool precision, then came over to help Steve. Like the times after he ran a tough race and then, taking a long deep breath to swallow the effort he’d just expended, swaggered over to the bleachers. Like the times at the end of a long day of work, when he came home and got ready to go out, settling his shoulders under his nice jacket, doing up his tie, and fixing his smile into place with a happy sigh. New again, ready and clean.

  
Steve nothing like so good at tucking things away. Though he was getting better, these days. He squinted through the scope at the target, frowning, finger cramped. His shot went well wide of his aim. He said, “Pulling the trigger, that’s almost like a prayer sometimes, itself. Feels like that.”

  
Bucky looked at him with tired impatience and said, “Steve, it’s only a prayer if you’re no _good_. Which, I’ll be honest, you’re not.”

  
“Not no good?” Steve gave him a quick, sideways smile.

  
“C’mon,” Bucky said, not smiling back, but moving to adjust his grip on the rifle stock. Bucky’s body warm right next to him, one hand up under the elbow of the arm that held the rifle, the other circling around his back. Almost the same posture he took when he led a girl in a dance, the curl of his guiding hand protective and courteously distant. Bucky’s eyes just fixed on the target, shadowed under the floppy fringe of hair that still made Steve blink to see--he was used to Bucky with Brylcreem, Bucky with a satin shine, not a Bucky with scruff and eyes that seemed sunk too deep, cheekbones that stood out, that made him want to run his fingers over them, and--

  
“You’re not _no_ good,” and Bucky shook his head and said, “You’re no good with a _gun_. Jesus, at this rate Captain America’s set to bolo his rifle test. This serum ain’t got you shooting any straighter."

  
Steve twisted his mouth, not sure what exactly Bucky meant by that last part, but like usual, not about to ask.

  
Bucky sighed, patted him on the back, and stepped away to let him resettle the cheek guard before he took another shot. “You may be one of those guys has to rely on luck with the longer shots.”

  
Always have, Steve thought. “Luck?” he said, and then, for some reason, “I’ll rely on you.”

  
“That’s real nice of you to say,” Bucky said, “but try again. Come on. Breathe in… pull back smooth.”

* * *

  
**December 1944.**

Alone with Phillips in the command tent, Steve leaned forward very close, fully aware of the impact of his physical presence now. He spat, “I am done following your orders. I am finished. I am not government property anymore. I’m going after Schmidt and then I’m done.”

“Rogers,” Phillips said, taken aback and sounding very, very tired himself. He pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned back from Steve. Not like a retreat. But like he was trying to give Steve space not to embarrass himself. Steve’s body shuddered with something between revulsion and anger and a terrible grinding weakness, deep in his own bones.

“You could have let him go home. You--”

“Captain Rogers--”

“What a joke. I’m no more fit to be a captain than--”

“Kid,” Phillips said, quietly, “I’m sorry you had to learn this way, but none of us is doing more than the job in front of us. Did you think this was the comics? You think there are guarantees? You did your best.”

“Did I?” Steve challenged. “Did you?”

* * *

 

**November 1943.**

Peggy said, “You would be surprised at how much power you have if you make the right requests.”

Steve said, “Really?”

Peggy said, “Subtlety may not come naturally to either of us, but I’m afraid sometimes it’s a political game we play. Now, what I suggest is that you ask about Dernier first. Stress the explosives expertise. Corporal Morita, you know, was already part of a special covert audio deception unit? Did you know?” Steve nodded. “Good. And of course you’ll ask for Jones. I’ve rarely seen someone so gifted with languages and ciphers and I’ve made a study of it myself.”

“I see where you’re going with this. And Monty. I have a soft spot for Brits, I guess.” Dazed at his own daring, he had to glance away after he flashed her a quick smile. Had to drag his eyes away from the warm, pleased, level look she gave him back.

Right. Brits. Monty. He’d gotten such a kick out of hearing James Montgomery Falsworth’s name--had asked if he were related to the man who’d drawn the Uncle Sam poster. But no, of course. Nor to the English general. Just a coincidence. What wasn’t any coincidence was the thoughtful, drawling way the Birmingham native-- _Brummie_ , as he’d told Steve--had laid out the tactics they might use against another attack like the Nazis had orchestrated in Azzano, and how he’d even had plans on how to make use of some of the energy-beam weapons from the factory. Monty was a _thinker_ , albeit one prone to peppering his everyday speech with abstruse quotations--the flotsam of his university years.

“He’s a Brummie, you said?” Peggy said, thoughtful. Apparently that meant something to her. It hadn’t really to Steve or any of the Americans. Monty’s known that, seemed to take a rueful pride in explaining his heritage to a bunch of Yanks--as if it meant more to him surrounded by those to whom it meant nothing. “Sounded southern to me. You know the university there’s rather notoriously liberal.”

Steve blew out a breath, mildly relieved his attempt at flirtation had been dropped. “Yeah, we talked about Socialism a little.”

“Hm,” Peggy said. “So. What’s the rest of the team?”

“Well, Bucky, of course,” said Steve, “And then, Dugan. He saw a lot in the Pacific. He knows a thing or two.”

Peggy paused. “It sounds like you know what to do,” she said at last, looking down at the brown pleated front of her trousers, then back up at him, brushing hair out of her face. Steve’s hand twitched at his side; he wasn’t sure if the move he made was to brush it back, or an instinctive reach for a pencil, so he could capture the way it had just tickled her cheek before the firm press of her fingers had tucked the strand away. “Shall I see you tonight, then, at the bar? You must take the boys out to celebrate, of course. Steve?”

He’d been looking away again, trying to hold back. “Yes; I’d like that.”

* * *

 

**January 1944.**

“There is one problem,” Phillips said. Only he, Steve, and Howard sat cloistered in the tent, flap drawn tightly shut.

“Sergeant Barnes,” Stark broke in.

“Bucky? Hasn’t he been doing well? He made that thousand-yard shot.” Stubbornly, Steve refused to give them the acknowledgement they wanted. Tried to be the one calling the shots here. It didn’t work. “Sure, I know there’ve been some disciplinary issues, not that I think he was wrong to say some of--”

“Thing is, this is the first time on record Barnes has had disciplinary issues,” Phillips said. “Thing is, that, and his behavior in debrief, the continued refusal to maintain his uniform--Rogers, I shouldn’t have to go on. They’re calling it combat fatigue these days, is that it? Like you’re just goddamn sick and tired. Used to be shell shock,” Phillips said, shutting the file in front of him and folding his hands. “It’s become pretty clear, I’m sorry to say, over the course of this training block. Now, the Army’s recommendation would ordinarily be that Barnes be held back from active duty.”

“That’s fine,” Steve said, while his heart sank. _The way Bucky’s eyes went flat and blank. The tremor that shook his hands when he wasn’t holding his rifle on the range. The way he woke up shouting incoherent things in the dark. The way he smelled different. Dirty. Like metal. Like fear._ “Send him home. That’s great.” He swallowed. “With decoration, I hope.”

“That’s impossible,” Stark said, his usually quippy tone gone flat. “We need him in a field hospital for observation.”

Something about the way Stark said ‘observation’ prickled at the skin on Steve’s scalp.

“Rogers, unlike you, I was not born yesterday,” Phillips said. “Schmidt and Zola did something to that soldier and we are somewhat curious as to what that might be.”

“So ask him.” _The marks on Bucky’s face. The way he’d flinched away when Steve had tried to touch the back of his neck._

“You think _he_ knows?” Howard said.

“So you’re gonna what--lock him up and experiment on him?--like Zola did--”

“That’s one of the options,” Stark said.

Phillips said, “Believe me, it’s not my favorite plan.”

“What’s the other option?” Steve said, his fists balled on the table in front of him. Peggy had said: you have more power than you think. They’d let him make his demands about the specifics of his unit, they’d accepted that right enough. Why this? Why not send Bucky _home_? No, he told Peggy in his head. Sometimes I don’t. He tried to think of what he could do to negotiate this and came up empty. He realized: in putting together his unit so painstakingly--in making those demands--he’d tied himself to it, too. He couldn’t threaten to walk away, taking Captain America with him. No: they had him now.

Phillips said, the light in his eye almost kindly beneath his bristling overhang of brow, “Let him out in the field with you under your observation. We’ve got one mad scientist’s experiment running around already. You’re dead-set on making yourself useful. He says he wants to go along with you. Give him what he wants. Serve his country, his Captain America. It’s just what you had planned in the first place, only we want you keeping a more careful eye.” Was there something ironical there?

“He doesn’t know what he wants. He’s not in his right _mind_ right now,” Steve said, the pitch of his voice going up in a way that shamed him. _He doesn’t want Captain America, that’s for sure. That kid from Brooklyn, maybe. No, maybe he just wants Brooklyn._ Bucky had the damnedest pride sometimes, for all he accused _Steve_ of the same. Of course he wouldn’t admit wanting to go home. “He won’t even talk about--”

"Which proves my point," Howard murmured. “That he shouldn’t be in the field at all.”

“Rogers, quite frankly, soldiers don’t need to talk quite so damn much as they often do,” Phillips said, casting an annoyed look at Stark. Steve thought, _For a guy who says that, Phillips sure likes to run his mouth himself_. But: no. Was Phillips on his side here? Was anyone? They hadn’t even let Peggy in on this meeting. “I’m more worried about you in the field than I am Barnes. He’s a soldier. The U.S. Army has put a lot of time and attention into his training, I’ll tell you that, and not without good reason. It may be he’ll do better in the field than in a hospital anyhow. Seen it happen before.”

Now Steve’s chest squeezed with his own sick pride on Bucky’s behalf, too. Bucky. Still the better soldier than he was. Still the better--

“What we’re gonna need from you,” Phillips went on abruptly, “Are regular reports back on Barnes’s conduct. You’re the superior officer. You’re a real Captain now.” He’d made it official at Bucky’s goading; he’d punished Bucky with staff duty for his trouble, too. What Steve didn’t like to think of was that even while Bucky grumbled about running around all night after Lt. Fischer, he seemed relieved to have something to do all night other than pace outside and smoke his way through his cigarette ration.

“His conduct,” Stark said, “and his performance in the field. Any other irregularities.”

 _Other nervous complaints_. Steve recalled that last item on his own medical form. But he had volunteered. Bucky had been, he had just learned--Bucky had been drafted.

“Yes, sir,” Steve said coolly, with no intention of following through on the order in its entirety. He stared straight at Phillips, then glanced at Stark, betrayed. So that was why he’d given Bucky that new rifle. He wanted to see how he shot, how he was put together inside. Same as how he saw Steve, maybe. And here Steve had figured he and Howard were almost friends.

“Rogers, I mean it. It could be a shitshow if your sniper snaps in the field,” Phillips said. “We’re giving him a shot, ahem, because he’s damn good at what he does, and he’s sure got mettle, ahem, but the gun’s only as steady as the man who holds it, you understand?”

Was Phillips talking about Steve or Bucky, there? _You’re no good with a gun_ , Bucky had said. Or was Bucky supposed to _be_ the gun? He couldn’t understand all this doubletalk. Bucky probably could. But hell. Bucky wasn’t here. Which, all right-- _why_ wasn’t Bucky here?

“Why aren’t you telling him this?” Steve said.

“Unlike you, he didn’t need the situation spelled out for him,” Phillips said. “And quite frankly I’m not sure he could handle this kind of talk. We don’t wanna make too much official here, you understand? It’s for the kid’s own good. So we’re coming to you. His commanding officer. Captain Rogers.”

“His good,” Steve repeated. He thought, thank God Phillips didn’t say Captain America.

“I guess I did go to all that trouble with the rifle,” Howard said.

“Thanks,” Steve said coldly. “Thanks a lot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -As usual, title is taken from Rudyard Kipling's [If](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175772).  
> -Steve's quote 'Finally, brethren...' is from the Bible, Philippians 4:8 (Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition), in which Paul addresses the Christians at Philippi while he faces an uncertain future in prison himself.  
> -Both of Monty's are Hamlet (poor fella was in a Shakespeare troupe in university). I seem compelled to write lots about Commandos named Jim. Bucky's fic forced me to write a side Morita story; this one may send me off on a Monty riff, given that he and Steve spend a lot of time planning tactics with their heads together.  
> -Yes, Phillips does say _his_ Captain America.  
>  -Many thanks to beta [stripyjamjar](http://archiveofourown.org/users/stripyjamjar/pseuds/stripyjamjar), both for the edit and the continuing helpful advice on all things British and Bible-related.


	2. Chapter 2

Steve still felt like he was making it all up as he went along. Playing Captain America, just without any cue cards to help him stumble through the tongue-twister of ‘bullet in the barrel of your best guy’s gun.’ He kept in mind what Phillips had said: _soldiers talk too damn much_. He talked less these days. He learned to think first of what the men needed and last of himself. He learned to delegate, to keep track of the rota of who took which watch. To tell by observation how much march the men had in them.

Bucky always volunteered for more--more watches at night, more scouting missions--than his share. He often offered to take point when they marched. He told Steve: “You don’t shoot the guy in front; you let him pass. You shoot the _next_ guy. So really it’s _your_ risk. Keep that shield up.”

Steve fought back, hating that he had to. As neutrally as he could, he said, “No, sergeant. Dugan takes point today.”

“Let me take point, kid,” Dugan said, and Bucky said yes, finally, but not to Steve. Dugan had patted him on the back, passing him to tramp up front of them through the snow.

So that was how it was.

Bucky didn’t sleep much. When he did, it was generally in a pup tent with Dugan and Morita.

Steve had trouble stumbling through the twist of his tongue around Bucky nowadays. He didn’t _lie_ to Bucky; for one thing it had never seemed to work before, so why would it now? The weary distant look in Bucky’s eyes now said maybe he understood the situation, anyhow. Was he taking on so much to prove himself? Steve knew how that felt; knew how it felt to be labeled inadequate. But he didn’t know how to say it.

He wrote up terse laudatory reports to Phillips. He tried not to listen to the sounds Bucky made at night.

* * *

 

Dugan and Morita: Steve wouldn’t have assumed they’d get along well enough to share such close quarters.

In fact he’d had his reservations about the two of them when he’d put together his team. Dugan had fought in the Pacific and mistrusted Morita on sight, by the kind of instinct ground in over long fearful sleepless nights. He talked a lot about the Japs. The Japs this, the Nips that. Not the same as the casual contempt people had for the Irish on Vinegar Hill, Steve thought idly, remembering home. Sure it could be virulent, but sometimes it was almost friendly, _you stupid Mick, you smell like fuckin’ fish anyhow, best prices, even you can afford em, fresh fish, fresh fish--_ when he was out for his Ma. Or the Italians--Italians like the other men the rest of them had fought--the Italians yelling out _finocchio, pazzino--_ But something new, and with a rotten vein to it, short and clipped, Japs, Nips, not like a word at all but like a wad of spit.

(Maybe everything sounded shorter and sharper these days. He heard with great clarity. Before, the world had been a blur, a burble, a singsong chant of comfortable and regular humiliation and redemption. A fight he knew he couldn’t win. Now that he could, things got sharper. Harder. Crystalline and focused and clear--so clear, you could see clear through them, like the icicles he drew. Icicles, so hard to render in pencil on paper gone just a little damp and warped. Hard to draw because you weren’t really drawing the thing itself, you were drawing what reflected onto it.)

Steve had talked to them separately, had tried that. He’d said, look, he isn’t one. Dugan said, it’s funny, Cap, I know that, but it gets in your goddamn guts.

Steve had talked to Morita, who had shrugged and spat. What goes around, he said. But thanks Cap, all the same, for trying.

Steve had said, No, I won’t let things stand this way. And he’d been right to push: he had, as it turned out.

Now the two of them, Dum Dum and Morita, slept in a tangle with Bucky, Morita’s casual snore a low bass counterpoint to Dugan’s fitful snorts and the faint near-words Bucky sometimes murmured.

How that reconciliation had happened was a funny thing, Steve thought, recalling it. When he’d finally gotten the two of them together and told them to settle their differences, this was how it went. He said, “Finish this or I won’t take either of you out into the field.”

“Great. Put ‘em up,” Dugan said, cocking his fists like a prizefighter, like the circus showman he was, scars on his knuckles shining out.

“Not that way,” said Steve, feeling something of a hypocrite. But he couldn’t let them. Jones had told him stories of times his buddies had let themselves get goaded into fistfights with white soldiers out at the English pubs; those had never ended well.

“Game of poker?” suggested Morita, bland and unreadable. Steve was surprised: none of them played poker better than Dugan.

“Well, sure,” Dum Dum said finally, lowering his hands, mustache bristling over a suspicious curl of his lip.

They set to, hunched over across a table in the cleared-out mess. Morita smoked his way steadily through a pack of Lucky Strikes from his C-ration while they did so, and Dugan chomped on the King Edward cigars he carefully hoarded from the packages his wife sent. Between the two of them, a dark gray-blue cloud rose steadily and hung in the air like the smokescreen thrown over a battlefield. Thick.

The game went on quite awhile. The rest of them lost interest and wandered off. Steve drew idly in one corner, drew what he saw: the pair of them bent over the table, faces in shadow and cards in hand. The smoke he blurred in with the side of his pencil. At the next table over, Bucky silently took his rifle apart, oiled it piece by piece, and put it back together. His eyes downcast, lips pursed a little around a faint murmur.

It sounded like he was counting. Steve could hear the shapes of Bucky’s hissing words (-- _ississippi_ \--). He could also hear most of what Jim and Dum Dum were saying; he’d come to realize his hearing had gotten so much keener that he overheard more than people would believe. In the field, that would come in handy. But now, he tried not to listen in too hard to the uneven sound of Bucky’s breathing and mumbling beside him while he oiled the gun, the odd slow beat of his heart. Steve drew, and watched Dugan and Morita out of the corner of his eye.

The tally of won and lost hands mounted. Mostly Dum Dum and Jim seemed to be betting each other Lucky Strikes two-to-one against King Edwards, but a word from Jim and then Dum Dum’s hat went in the pile in the middle of the table, too. And then, next hand, Morita laid his cards down with a quiet flourish.

“King-high flush,” Jim said.

“Well, well,” Dugan said. Morita reached out, picked up Dugan’s hat from the center of the table, and very slowly set it down on his own head, staring at Dugan. Poker-faced.

Dum Dum shook his head and looked back at him for a long, long time, tipping his chair onto its two hind legs, his thick arms folded over his chest. He stood up. The chair legs bumped down.

“Tricky bastard,” he said, but the sting had gone out of it.

“No tricks,” Morita said, blowing smoke. “Just luck this time. Which I need, against a tricky bastard such as yourself.”

“Well, fair’s fair,” Dugan said, still standing, looking down at Morita in his hat.

He reached out across the table and tipped the brim of the hat on Morita’s head, resettling it there gently at just a bit of an angle: like he was crowning him. King-high. He took the cigar out of his mouth and handed it over to Morita too, still lit as it was and smoldering. The congratulatory cigar you gave, as after someone’s wife had a baby. Morita took it and passed his own cigarette back to Dugan in return. Dugan put it in his mouth, under the brush of mustache that sometimes made his expression inscrutable.

Dugan said, sitting back down, “Okay, cowboy. You’re all right with me.”

Morita blew a smoke ring from Dugan’s cigar that wobbled over them like a dirty crooked halo. Over Dugan’s dirty crooked hat that he now wore. He grinned a big, satisfied grin.

“You’re giving that back, of course,” Dugan said.

“Of course,” Morita said. “It’s yours.”

“Always will be,” Dugan said.

“Always was.”

“Looks just as bad on the both of you!” Bucky called; he slid the firing pin of his gun into place with a low wheeze of oiled steel alloy.

* * *

 

Bucky, even in the shape he was in, got along with everyone--well, everyone except Steve, nowadays. Steve? He didn’t know. He did his best.

It wasn’t just when he gave orders that he felt set apart, an actor mouthing words.

At night they all huddled together for warmth and for once Steve felt regret for not needing more from others. He didn’t need the body heat, though he was happy to share his--mostly with Monty, who didn’t always get along easily with the others; or Dernier and Jones. It wasn’t a position he’d been in before. Oh, he needed them, all right. He relied on them for the job they had to do. But not for his own sake.

Why did he miss that?

He buried himself in plans. Before one mission, during which they had decided to parachute down into a deep ravine, he called over Monty and Jim Morita to discuss tactics one more time, while Jones listened on the radio for the frequency Hydra had been using nearby, and Bucky sat nearby with Dernier and Dugan, idly playing a hand of cards while they listened.

Monty, of course, had been a paratrooper; Morita knew the stealth technology that would keep them safe during the jump. They sat in the growing gloom of cold dusk around the low burned-out fire they’d set in a stand of trees, their breaths all crystal fog that turned to smoke over the crackling blackened logs. Trees around them. Icicles that clinked in the wind.

Morita held up the strings of delicate tin foil and wire they would drop before them to muddle the German radar. They shook a little in the wind, too. Bucky had written Steve about using those things during one jump he’d done during the Italian coastal invasion. He had made a dig about _scrap metal_. How it was useful. How it _had_ saved his life.

“It’s called chaff,” said Morita briefly, watching the wire and foil spin in the wind. “Not the kind _we_ ever had in our fields, o’ course.”

“Let the angels separate the wheat from the chaff,” Monty said, flip, “because heaven knows the Germans won’t be able to do it; well done, Jim.”

Morita blinked back at him, slow and almost mocking. Sometimes he could say as much with a glance as Bucky, and what he said in this case was, _Monty, you sure run your mouth._

(Soldiers don’t have to talk so much as they damn well do.)

 _He will gather his wheat, but the chaff he will burn,_ Steve thought. Talk too much; hell, he _thought_ too much. He hoped to God he’d made the right choices with this mission. Who could judge? Who could decide? Who could tell what was chaff, by the blind eyes of radar, and what was a man? _It is not possible for man to sever the wheat from the tares, that must be the Angels’ doing…_ So: onward. There was no time for that kind of thought.

He looked to Monty for confirmation of their plan.

“Right,” Monty said, all business now. “As Cap pointed out, we’ll have a brief window in which to complete this drop and we need to be sure we all stay together. Parachuting is not an exact science.”

“Is anything?” Steve said, thinking of the thrumming machine that had spat him out into a world of technicolor. “

“Okay,” Jones said, looking up, coiling in the radio antenna by hand crank. “Seems they’ve got a patrol out at 1500 hours, from what I can make out. We can pick them off then.” The plan was to take some of the Hydra uniforms, if they could, to get as close to the base set into the wall of the ravine so they could fire the explosives and blow it all to Hell.

“Good idea,” Steve said. “I can draw them out, then, after we all land. I _do_ ,” he said drily, “make a good target.”

“Ha,” Dugan said, from where he sat, twisting to look at Steve with something between amusement and respect.

“Cap,” Bucky said, looking up, laying down his hand of cards. “Why don’t I cover you on that one.”

“Sure,” Steve said. “What did you have in mind?”

Bucky exchanged a look with Dugan. “Dum Dum, remember that time in the mountains a couple days after we crossed the Arno…”

“Try not to.”

“I got some crampons and found a ledge, and I climbed up and shot from there,” Bucky said, ignoring Dum Dum’s stare and the slow shake of his head. Steve stared at him, too. He could still recall the long drop over fire, the lurching way Bucky’d made it across the rope bridge, his own agonized leap. He didn’t know if he had it in him to do that again, to make that leap. _The chaff He will burn_. No: it was a good plan. He nodded at Bucky, but couldn’t meet his eyes.

“Look,” Bucky said, “You need covering fire.”

“It’s true,” Monty admitted. “All of us will.”

Steve thought it over, trying to be objective. “If we’re going to do that, we should put up a dummy sniper, as well,” he said. “You can set up timed muzzle flashes, right?” he said to Dernier. “On another ledge?”

“ _Ouai?_ ” Dernier said. “Yes, _c’est bien possible. Bien. Maintenant,_ let me _racconter_ you my plans for parachute down the dynamite.”

“Sounds dynamite,” Bucky said, his voice a little too loud. Steve wanted to say something. He wanted--

_Soldiers shouldn’t talk so damn much as they do._

It was a good plan. _Dynamite._

It was funny: Steve had been colorblind before. Then, after Project Rebirth, after Captain America, he had opened up one of the comic books and there it was, dynamite, in wired-together blocks of eye-stingingly brilliant red.

Then he’d seen dynamite in real life and it turned out to be a dull clayey brown.

* * *

 

It was a good plan.

It worked almost perfectly.

The blood in real life was a bright eye-stinging red. Like the dynamite in comic books.

At least, Steve thought, staring down in mild shock, it was just _his_ blood.

He hadn’t taken into account that Hydra would have a sniper covering the backs of their patrol, too. The shot had come from nowhere after he thought the fight was over and the rest of the Commandos had taken off. It had cut under his shield, and taken him high up in the thigh. Bucky, up above, had scrambled to adjust his aim while Steve staggered backwards, stunned. Had aimed and shot himself, and Steve had seen the far figure of the Hydra sniper fall.

It was just them, then, Steve down below and Bucky climbing, with terrifying tension in every line of his body, down the crampons he’d dug into the wall of the ravine. Trying to hurry, Steve could tell, but so hesitant in the placement of his feet on crampons, fingers clinging, forcing himself down. Steve could hear the huff of his breath even from as far away as he was.

Steve leaned against the wall of the canyon trying to clamp shut the leaking hole in his leg. It would take about an hour for the other guys to get back. He figured he could make that, for sure. He waited for Bucky, willing him not to hurry too much.

He tried to stay standing, then thought better of it and sat, both hands around the wound, his shield clattering down beside him. The bullet had sheared straight through the tiny join between the plates Howard had sewn into his uniform pants and sort of exploded open--maybe the sniper had cut it in an x-pattern, because the entry hole was pretty big. He ripped the fabric open further, to see the damage. Blood and muscle pulsed with the beat of his heart, pink-purple-red--colors as new to him as the French words he learned from Dernier, but colors that had just as quickly become part of his vocabulary, an exotic delight to them as if they’d been there inside him all along.

Been there inside him all along.

There was Bucky, kneeling next to him, rifle slung across his back and hands hovering in the air.

“Okay. Steve,” he said, very clearly, “Let me see.”

“Look,” Steve said. “Look at it. Isn’t that something? It’s the color of watermelon. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that what it’s like?”

“Very funny. Stevie? You okay?”

 _Stevie_. For a second he was glad.

“Yeah. No, it’s… hey, look! It’s closing…. geez, it’s sort of closing up all deep down in there already…” He realized something. “The bullet’s still in there.”

“Yeah, you don’t want it to leave that, that’s how you get blood poisoning, and even for you...” Bucky gritted his teeth.

“So cut it further open again. Let’s cut it out,” Steve suggested. It really didn’t hurt that much, he thought, surprised. It did hurt, but-- _nothing hurts anymore_ , Bucky had said. Bucky had his knife out, now, a blank expression on his face. “Let me, give me that.” Bucky shouldn’t have to.

“I can. Try to hold still.”

Steve couldn’t. His leg kept spasming of its own volition when Bucky dug in the knife, when he tried, flinching, to feel for the bullet. Steve gritted his teeth. It did. It did hurt. But the feeling was so new; it was so new. Like nerves he hadn’t had before could feel pain. “Sh. Sh, pal,” Bucky murmured. Steve hadn’t been aware he was making a noise. “Okay,” Bucky said, sitting back on his heels. “We’ll wait for the rest of ‘em. I can’t fish around in there on my own, someone else has to hold you still. We’ll just sit tight. But we’re gonna have to cut through whatever closes up again when… fuck. Steve, I don’t know... you’re a goddamn _prototype_.”

Silence for awhile. Then, the sound of a hard explosion, and a brilliant burst of orange in the sky. An echoing boom and the crumble of rocks in the canyon.

“Hey,” Steve said. “The plan worked.”

Somehow, he had wound up leaning back between Bucky’s legs, Bucky’s hand on his hair, holding him to his chest. Steve had his own hands clamped around his thigh, keeping the bullet wound closed, trying not to let blood leak out. He tried not to think of how they’d have to slice it open again in thirty minutes, when Morita and his med kit made it back.

Bucky brushed the hair off Steve’s face, hand sticky with blood.

“You’re a _nincompoop_ , Cap,” he said, in a sigh.

“I’m not,” Steve said.

“Is it my fault?” Bucky murmured. “I should’ve seen the sniper. It’s my fault. Fuck. _I’m_ a nincompoop.”

“You’re not,” Steve said..

“I’ll do better,” Bucky said, something like pleading in his voice.

“You’re--”

“Shut up. Shut up.”

When the rest of the Commandos got back, sooty but jubilant, Bucky held Steve’s leg still while Morita cut a deep line through muscle tissue and fished out the bullet, which he handed to Steve. Steve closed his fingers around it. He’d keep it. A reminder. To do better from now on, so no one else had to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -An explanation of [chaff for radar evasion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_\(countermeasure\)). It was used to conceal both planes and parachuters.  
> -The Bible passage about chaff (or 'tares,' really, the definition and meaning are woolly) refers to Matthew 13:30, advice to the reapers.  
> -King Edwards were actually rather cheap cigars, not special. Dugan started smoking them during his circus days and just got used to them--they're familiar.  
> -In case you want to read more about Morita: [Radio to the Youth](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4223013/chapters/9549189).  
> -The 'color of watermelon' line is a reference to my other background fic, [Sinople](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4332921).  
> -Thanks as always to [stripyjamjar](http://archiveofourown.org/users/stripyjamjar/pseuds/stripyjamjar) for the beta.


End file.
